The present disclosure relates generally to insurance brokerage services. In particular, the disclosed methods are directed to providing a way for insures to select the best insurer for their needs and provide the insurer up-to-date information regarding the owner's property, so that accurate insurance policy premium quotes may be prepared. The methods disclosed provide insurance-related services to both property owner and insurer.
People purchase insurance to protect themselves from potential future loss. Maintaining up-to-date and detailed information regarding one's property, real or personal, is important for policy holders when they need to make a claim for loss or damage to that property. Unfortunately, disagreements arise between policy holders and insurers as to what is owed to the policy holder or what the insurer's obligations are based on the value of the policy holder's property. Most policy holders, such as a homeowner, never experience losing their home and attempting to rebuild, so the relationship with their insurer remains distant and cordial. This relationship between policy holder and insurer is tested only in the face of extreme adversity. The aftermath of many recent disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and the Colorado and California wildfires, reveals an alarming disconnect between the insurers and policy holders.
Traditional home-insurance policy holder/insure relationships have not been ideal. Historically, through the 1980's, insurance companies wrote a large number of guaranteed replacement policies for homeowners. These policies represented the highest level of coverage and truly guaranteed full replacement on losses experienced by policy holders. In the 1990's, devastating natural disasters prompted numerous claims against said full rep replacement policies from homeowners (policy holders) who had just experienced a total loss on their homes. These mass, simultaneous claims bankrupted a number of smaller insurers and significantly impacted the profits of the major providers.
Insurers, learning from the aftermath of the 1990's natural disasters, realized that providing full replacement policies was unprofitable and not sustainable. Currently, most insurance companies do not offer true full replacement policies comparable to the pre-1990's full replacement policies. Standard policies today provide far less coverage compared to what would be considered full replacement coverage, while charging considerably greater premiums for top-tier policies.
Unfortunately, policy holders have been slow to adjust to changes in the degree of coverage and the responsibilities placed upon them to maintain the information contained within their policies. A far too common occurrence is when policy holders choose to trust their insurance agent and sign up for a policy without fully understanding for the terms. Policy holders often assumed that a top-tier replacement policy guarantees full replacement value for losses when disaster strikes: In reality, these policies cover only the value of the home at the time it is insured and, in some instances, include additional terms to cover reconstruction costs.
Furthermore, many policy holders assume their insurance agent will keep them update on any additional information required to keep their policy current, when in fact, this often does not occur. Thus, although unknown to the policy holder, insurers will not always check in with them periodically to see if there should be any changes to their existing policy. It is then an unspoken rule that the policy holder must notify the insurer if there are any changes to his property that might require the insurance policy to be adjusted. For example, it is often on the policy holder to inform his insurance when the policy holder replaces the existing carpet or upgrades his kitchen, thereby changing the value of his property.
Becoming obsolete is one major problem with home insurance policies. An insurance policy can become obsolete due to a range of factors. For one thing, traditional market forces alone can cause the value of a property to appreciate over time. Another factor that comes into play is when price of construction materials change due to over or short supply of such materials. When combined with changes in building codes and regulations, inflation in the price of labor, and any significant updates to the home, it becomes apparent that a policy based on a fixed valuation from potentially many years back could easily underestimate the cost of reconstruction at today's rates by tens of thousands of dollars or more.
Thus, there exists a need for a service that provides “transparency” for both the policy holder as well as the insurer. This service would not only aid policy holders with not only choosing an appropriate policy but also helping the policy holder maintain up-to-date specifications about their property. Furthermore, insurers would benefit from having an easy set of parameters to build an accurate policy quote as well as having an accurate assessment of the value of their policy holder's property, thus giving rise to fewer disputes over claims filed.
A number of prior art patents disclose methods related to insurance offers and services, but none offer the comprehensive services detailed in the description below. The following patents are representative and are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes: US 2010/0042440 to Seitomer published on Feb. 18, 2010 (“Seitomer”); US 2008/0126138 to Cherney published on May 29, 2008 (“Cherney”); and US 2015/0012304 to Rao published on Jan. 8, 2015 (“Rao”).
Seitomer discloses applications and methods related to estimating the value of a home. Seitomer applies heuristic research methodology to determine the values of different characteristics of a home that is then used to estimate the value of a home. The methodology includes researching different types of home renovations and home furnishings based on quality and quantity. A user enters data regarding heir property and software application accesses the value for home reconstruction based on the user's entries. Also, the software generates initial insurance premiums based on the data generated from the home value estimator. While the methods disclosed in Seitomer would be able to estimate the cost of reconstructing a home, when the estimate relies on a user's own familiarity with the components that go into constructing their home, there may inaccuracies in determining the actual value of reconstruction.
The Cherney application discloses a system and method for presenting insurance otters and is specifically directed to vehicular insurance. Cherney's system stores user information and a plurality of insurance policy offers. The Cherney system provides for a user interface where a user can input information about the item they wish to insure, and the owner's personal information. The system generates an insurance quote used on the information provided and the repository of policies in their system. The Cherney application does not relate easily to home insurance. For example, it would be much more challenging to build an insurance quote for real property based on what a user could input. Further, unlike vehicles, where the value can be roughly estimated from the make, model and year, the value of a home cannot be so easily estimated. The Rao application discloses methods for managing insurance policy events. One method includes steps beginning with (a) a broker receiving an electronic communication from an insurance provider of an event elated to a policy of a consumer serviced by the insurance provider and (b) responding to the notice, automatically determining whether the event meets at least one event criteria monitored by the broker. This method further includes steps of the program initiating an action related to the event once the program determines that at least one event criterion monitored by the broker has been met. While the methods described by Rao would help a broker better service his customers does not provide bid preparation services for both finding an insurer or contractor nor does it provide a repository for relevant information regarding a property or a platform on which policy holders and insurers or contractors may communicate.